The Real Estate
Consumer Review

Your Relocation Moving Checklist

Relocation is always a major undertaking for most people, but there are ways to help make everything go much more smoothly by planning ahead and being organized. So here is a general relocation check list to help you get the most benefit from your relocation services.

• If you will be using a moving company or relocation service to help you move, make sure that you get your scheduled move date lined up with them at least 8 weeks in advance. You don't want to get down to the last minute and have to make a mad scramble, or pay outrageous prices because you didn't take care of this step early enough. Also be sure to shop around for moving prices, as they can often vary considerably from one company to the next.



• Contact all of your utility companies at least a month in advance to let them know of your move date and arrange for shutoff of your services at the proper time. These will include your electric, telephone, gas, and cable companies as well as others too.



• As soon as you have your new residence lined up, call the utility companies in that area and notify them of your arrival date so they can have all of your services turned on and working for you when you arrive.



• Notify your post office of the relocation and provide them with a forwarding address so you don't experience interruption of mail service. This should be done about one month in advance.



• Start your packing as early as possible, perhaps beginning with items that you use infrequently and are confident will not be needed before you actually begin the move. You will need plenty of boxes and packing supllies so get these on hand in quantity to allow you to just focus on packing as you have the time to do so. Also try to pack your boxes so that your items that are most often used are all together and can be readily found in your new location with little trouble.




• If you have pets, make arrangements for their travel as soon as you can as well. You wouldn't want them traveling with the rest of your moving supplies, so they may have to accompany you on your relocation trip. If that will be by car, you will need to line up hotels that accept pets along the route that you will be traveling. If you are traveling by air, check with your airline well in advance to determine what their requirements for transporting pets are.



• If you have sensitive or hard to replace information on your computer, be sure to back up the hard drive before you dismantle it and take the backups with you instead of packing them up with the computer. In case any damage comes to your computer during the move, you will have all of your data safe and sound that can be uploaded onto a new computer if need be, without any loss of data.

In the excitement of relocating from one area to another, it's easy to lose focus on the tasks at hand that need to be done, but if you use this checklist as a guide, you can bring order and organization to the whole relocation project.